Smart Ball (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

Описание: A playthrough of Sony Imagesoft's 1992 SNES platformer, Smart Ball.

Smart Ball is a pretty good early SNES platformer that throws in a couple of interesting twists to the typical hop-and-bop fare. You play as Jerry (a blue blob of goo) that can stick to any smooth wall or ceiling, ride on or squish enemies, or pick up power-ups like iron balls, jumping enhancements, and other stuff. The wall-sticking ability combined with the large stage layouts filled with multiple paths make it a game that you could play several times through and still not find everything that has been hidden in the out-of-the-way corners.

The graphics are nice and bright and colorful, but outside of a few neat rotation tricks (the moon stage does look pretty cool), there isn't anything too terribly impressive or 16-bit looking about it. The soundtrack is completely outstanding, though - it's hyper-catchy and totally hummable.

It's too bad that Sony decided to gut so much of the game while localizing it for North America, though. The Super Famicom version of the game featured town scenes between stages and provided an actual plot in-game. Those parts have been completely excised in the US version: I can only guess that they went with the path that required the least work possible. No text to translate would make the localization a much cheaper process. I haven't seen it, but apparently there is a patch for the Japanese version that translates it into English if you're interested in seeing it in it's original form while being able to read it.

Finally, it was developed by Game Freak, and directed by Satoshi Tajiri - Mr. Pokemon himself. There was also a sequel slated for 1994 that was apparently in the works until Sony canned it as they prepared the PlayStation launch. The music was done by Yoshinori Sunahara, aka "Marin", a member of the Japanese techno/dance group Denki Groove, who also worked on the soundtrack for the Genesis port of Galaxy Force II.

Smart Ball is a fun little platformer. I really enjoyed it, even with the missing stuff - it's a nice throwback to a much simpler, classic style of game play that you don't see very often anymore.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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